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Nutrition and Sports Nutrition

What is Nutrition? Nutrition is another way of saying food; it is the energy unit we require to go about our tasks. Each task requires a certain amount of food energy, walking requires less food energy than running the same distance. Each person requires a differing amount of food energy, men generally require more than women and children require proportionately more size for size than adults.

So how do we know how much we need? This is simple, if you are gaining weight then you need to eat less or change the type of foods consumed and vice versa.

Many women find that as they pass the menopause they gain weight. This is often because their metabolism slows as their body functions alter. This also occurs when people change jobs and find their amount of activity is lessened.

To maintain a steady weight you need to put into your body what you put out in terms of energy.

So what do we do when we want to lose weight? We eat less? Wrong. By eating less we are telling our systems that we are going to starve! That causes a chain reaction in the body and the metabolism slows and burns the food slower, any requirements for more energy if we are exercising comes from burning protein, a process called gluconeogenesis which converts protein to glucose, the units of sugar that the body needs for all cell metabolism, and for our feeling of being energetic. Where does the protein come from? It comes from lean muscle depleting our amount of muscle bulk. What do we need to burn food? Muscle. So by starving yourself you not only lose weight but lose muscle mass too, so when you start to eat properly you gain weight quickly, hence the term yo-yo dieting. Incidentally, when reducing the quantity of foods potentially you are also reducing or not getting the right amount or type of vitamin or mineral for optimum health.

So you see, to lose weight we have to modify our diet. Humans are creatures of habit and to completely change our diets would cause stress. Again the body would react to stress in a negative way, that’s why I said modify.

At Back2Back Complementary Healthcare, nutritional advice is available to encourage healthy eating.

Sports Nutrition allows the body to gain all the additional nutrients that the athlete or anyone undergoing heavy training requires. They are advised what foods or nutrients that can be increased to benefit their particular sport to improve performance and prevent "hitting the wall" whilst undergoing training or the event, and how to prevent lethargy the following day.